


2am love

by IndianSummer13



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-10-08 22:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17394965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndianSummer13/pseuds/IndianSummer13
Summary: She serves coffee and pie in the early hours. He writes and edits photographs at formica tables. Somewhere in New York, they collide.





	1. Chapter 1

Other than the middle-aged man who’s working his way through a turkey sandwich, the diner is empty. That’s not unusual - it is, after all, a little shy of two in the morning; a weekday too, so no customers hungry after dancing at the club two blocks over are seeking coffee and stale pie - and Betty picks up the next saltshaker in the line. She polishes away the fingerprints and then leaves her own on the clean glass. 

She doesn’t like to think of this being a pointless task - if only because it makes her feel better about being paid for wiping the counter when it’s not even dirty. 

But then the bell attached to the door rings and she looks up at her only other customer. He looks around her age - perhaps a little older; perhaps not, on second glance - and looks up as he reaches the counter.

“You still serving?”

“Of course,” Betty replies. “What can I get for you?”

“Just coffee,” he says. “Black - no sugar.”

She nods. “Take a seat and I’ll bring it over.”

It’s a disappointing order, requiring nothing more than the tilt of her wrist, and she finds herself watching her customer take a laptop from his messenger bag. He thanks her for the coffee as she pours it (and then again when she stops) and she lingers at the edge of the table. “Would you like some pie? It’ll only be thrown out in the morning.”

He looks at her and blinks. “Pie?”

“It’s cherry.”

His lips twitch briefly. “It’s on the house?”

Betty nods again. “On the house.”

Her customer smiles a thanks and she busies herself back at the counter, taking care not to ruin the crust when she slices a fat wedge. When she delivers it, he’s typing furiously at his laptop, and she sets it down so the fork doesn’t clatter. 

“Enjoy.”

He doesn’t reply and she doesn’t stay, making her way to the man at the far end of the diner to offer him some free pie too. 

Nobody can say she’s unfair with her service.

(Although, perhaps regrettably, neither customer says goodbye when they leave) 

  
  


-

  
  


The following evening, he comes back, asking for the same order of black coffee - no sugar - as he had the previous night.

“We have blueberry pie tonight,” Betty tells him. “It has to go in the trash when we get the new delivery in the morning, so if you’d like some...”

He chuckles. His eyes are bluer than she’d realised. “You’re really selling it.”

She smiles, feeling a blush creep into her cheeks. “I’m  _ not  _ selling it.”

“On the house?”

She nods, smiling a little wider and says, as she has before, “On the house.”

The slice is slightly larger than she anticipates, Betty realises as she’s setting it on the plate beside the little fork, but other than her usual customer who’s eating his turkey sandwich, this man with his laptop is the only reason she has anything (besides cleaning) to do. 

“Enjoy,” she tells him as she places it beside the still-full cup of coffee. He smiles and thanks her and she notes silently the little dimple either side of his lips, feeling her cheeks grow a little hot.

_ He’s interesting, _ she thinks, and heads back to the counter.

This time, he nods when he leaves.

  
  


-

  
  


Friday night (or, technically, Saturday morning) is busier. The bars stay open later and the air outside is warm each time the door sweeps open. Time passes faster with more customers, and Betty doesn’t notice the man with the laptop until, as she’s tidying away the limited evening menu, he says,

“I guess the pie isn’t on the house tonight?”

She looks up and he’s kind-of grinning and, inexplicably, it makes her grip on the menus weaken. “Not yet - You have competition from paying customers.”

He cocks an eyebrow. She swallows.”Guess I’ll buy a piece then.”

“Apple okay?”

He shrugs. “Sure. And coffee -”

“- Black, no sugar.”

His eyebrow rises for the second time. “You were very specific both times you’ve ordered,” Betty says. “Emphasis on the _ no sugar _ part.”

“You’ve got me figured out,” he muses. 

_ Not in the slightest, _ she thinks, but she keeps quiet on the subject. The bell chimes - more warm air; more customers - and he takes a seat. (Same booth as both previous nights)

She slices the pie and sets a fork on the edge of the plate and much later, when he leaves, he tells her, “Goodnight, Betty.”

  
  


-

  
  


Saturday night (or, if she’s to be accurate, Sunday morning) is busy. Busy enough that she’s not working alone, but with Kevin. Busy enough that when the man with the laptop enters, she doesn’t spot him until he’s already curling his hand around a full coffee cup. His fingers are long.

Betty thinks about them when she’s filling a glass of iced water, and it makes something clench in her stomach. He knows her name (granted, it’s displayed on the badge she has to wear above the pocket on her t-shirt) and she wants to know his, too. 

She spends her shift slicing pie and pouring coffee, and is disappointed when she discovers the empty table where he’s been sitting. 

“The redhead at the end of the bar is cute,” Kevin says, nudging her, and Betty glances across the diner in acknowledgement. 

“We have customers to serve, Kev,” she says with a roll of her eyes.

Later, the redhead leaves his number on a napkin and she folds it up inside of her apron. 

  
  


-

  
  


“You don’t work Sundays,” is how he greets her in the relative cool of the diner in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The humid air outside is heavy, and it feels heavier still when he leans over the counter ever-so-slightly.

“No - they’re my only day off.”

His lips twitch and Betty wonders if it’s habit or involuntary. “I’ll remember that.”

For some reason, her breath stutters, catching in her throat and she has to remind herself to swallow. She can hear it.

“I’ll have my usual,” the man adds. “Please.”

She nods, feeling like everything’s happening in slow motion, and says, “I’ll bring it over.”

Later, she’s clearing away the turkey sandwich plate left by her usual counter customer when the door opens. They close in five minutes and she fights the sigh building in her chest, but then she looks up and finds the redhead from a few nights ago smiling at her.

He’s holding a napkin with black numbers scrawled on it. “Just in case you lost the last one,” he says. 

Betty looks at the letters written above the cell number: Archie Andrews, and then, for some reason, her gaze travels to the man with the laptop sipping coffee at the booth across from them.

He catches her eye and promptly looks away, and she feels a flush come over her. “Thanks,” she finds herself replying. Archie grins.

There’s a bang on the door that makes her jump - a tall dark-haired man with Asian features winking in her direction - and Archie turns his head. “That’s Reggie.”

She supposes that information should mean more to her than it does, and she can hear Kevin’s _ this is why you’re single, Cooper. Just call him _ ringing in her ears.

Betty smiles and says, “I didn’t lose the last one - for the record.”

Archie feigns being wounded. “Ouch. So you just  _ weren’t going to call?” _

She shakes her head. “I didn’t say that.”

“You were playing hard-to-get, huh?”

There’s another bang on the door from Reggie, followed by the ringing of the bell. “You going to call him?”

This whole thing seems a little too movie-esque for her liking, but despite that thought Betty chuckles. “I guess so.”

“I don’t know man,” Reggie decides aloud. “She doesn’t seem that keen.”

The man with the laptop closes it - loudly - and rises from the booth. He leaves without so much as a nod, and after Archie has left too the diner seems to mock her. 

She’s disappointed the man with the laptop didn’t say goodnight.

She’s disappointed it wasn’t  _ him _ who left his number.


	2. Chapter 2

Sweet Pea’s headboard slams against the wall for what feels like the millionth time, and Jughead closes his laptop. 

Three blocks over, the bright pink lights of some diner he hasn’t bothered to learn the name of shine out, lighting up the growing puddles in the street. He still has time - they don’t close for two more hours - and the bell rings with something close to familiarity when he enters.

Betty’s there, wiping at the counter with a cloth that leaves the formica streak-free, and looks up when she hears the sound of the bell. (He might not have learned the name of the diner, but he’s been unable to clear the name of its pretty waitress from his mind)

She smiles and it makes him feel a little strange - like his cheeks might be betraying the heat he feels in them - and then asks,

“The usual?”

“Of course.” 

The man at the end of the counter eating his sandwich looks at them briefly, then turns his attention back to his food. Each time, Jughead realises, that the diner’s waitress has offered him a slice of free pie, the man he hopes isn’t a serial killer is offered one too.

What he’d (hopefully) assumed initially might’ve been her flirting must actually just be her being nice.

And then she says something that sews a seed of doubt into that thought. “You didn’t come last night.”

She noticed.

“Yeah…” Might as well tell the truth, he decides. “I tried another place a couple blocks over.”

Betty raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

_ Oh.  _ He feels his lips twitch. “Just for a change.”

This time, one of her hands goes to rest on her hip - a little sassy; a _ lot _ cute. “You order the same thing every time, but you tried a different diner  _ for a change _ ?”

What’s he supposed to say?  _ I was jealous that someone else asked you on a date despite the fact we’ve never talked about anything other than pie and coffee?  _ Jughead shrugs and Betty lets something tumble from her lips that sounds almost like a giggle, and he takes his seat at his usual table, slightly giddy from the knowledge that she’d noticed he wasn’t there.

He wonders if she ever called the guy with the napkin.

  
  


-

  
  


As the week passes, he finds himself arriving at the diner earlier and earlier. The city air is thick with heat and humidity, the rolling clouds above threatening a huge thunderstorm as the bell chimes with the movement of the door.

“I still don’t know your name,” Betty says as she sets down a generous wedge of peach pie. 

He goes to make some quip about it being pointless; an embarrassment. And then, for some reason, he says only, “It’s Jughead.”

He waits for a laugh. A scoff. A roll of her eyes. Instead, she tells him, “I knew it would be something interesting.” And then the bell chimes and she heads back to the counter and for a long time, Jughead forgets to type. 

  
  


-

  
  


He stays until closing. He drinks almost the whole pot of coffee and then tips enough that he won’t feel quite so guilty about all of the free pie, and Betty wipes the sugar dispensers that aren’t dirty, gnawing at her bottom lip the whole time. 

“There’s nothing wrong with the pie you know,” Jughead says, watching her until she looks up.

“I know.”

“Seems a waste to throw it out - or even give it away. You could still sell it.”

“Are you complaining about all the free food you’ve gotten?”

Her eyes are bright and his lips twitch into a smile. “No. Just saying I reckon people would still pay for it in the morning.”

She shrugs. 

“You don’t eat it?”

It’s only tiny, but he catches the slight flinch of her shoulders; a flex of her fingers before they curl inward towards her palms and then straighten back out again. “Not really.”

It seems as though this is where he should leave it, and so he does, telling her goodnight as she locks the door behind him.

If this was a movie, he thinks, he’d turn around and she’d reopen the door and they’d kiss as the rain thrashed down.

It’s not a movie. She doesn’t open the door. The rain doesn’t fall.

  
  


-

  
  


Jughead doesn’t like Saturday nights. Betty doesn’t work and Sweet Pea’s girlfriend always comes over. He contemplates going elsewhere but he’s gotten used to the coffee at his usual haunt, despite the fact it tastes a little peculiar - earthy, but on the mildly concerning side of soil. 

The door of his roommate’s bedroom slams shut and then there’s giggling, which quickly subsides in tandem with a soft thud against the wall. Jughead closes his laptop and heads out.

It’s still quiet when he reaches the diner - no clubs letting out drunken revellers yet - and he orders his usual from the man at the counter. The coffee, when it comes, is strong and dark and it does his job in giving him that little buzz he needs to resume writing. 

He’s mid-way through a paragraph detailing his main character’s discovery of incriminating evidence regarding a local murder when a shadow is cast over his screen. He barely looks up, left hand reaching blindly for his coffee cup’s assumed refill, but then there’s a voice.

“Do you even _ have _ an apartment to go to?”

Ignoring the mild sting and the instant picture in his mind of the beaten trailer and then the drive-in and then the janitor’s closet, he pauses in his typing to look up properly.

“Are you complaining about my repeat custom?”

Betty shakes her head with a smile and he smells daisies and sunlight. She’s wearing a white sundress with little green flowers on and her legs are unfair for many,  _ many  _ reasons. “Can I sit?”

“Go ahead,” he tells her, and she tucks the cotton material against the backs of her thighs as she takes a seat in the booth opposite. He watches her for a moment, and she seems to watch him too - fingers still lingering over the keys; eyes flicking back to his screen every now and again to check the words haven’t been deleted by some weird act of nature. 

“You’re always writing,” she says.

“Only at night.”

She folds her hands and sets them on the table. “Why here?”

“My roommate has a new girlfriend.”

This, for some reason, makes her laugh. “So it’s not about the coffee or the pie?”

“It wasn’t initially.”

Betty lifts an eyebrow. His heart thuds. “And now?”

“They’re alright I guess.”

Despite the heat in his cheeks, it’s easy - this little flirty exchange. 

She’s playing too. “And the service?”

“Faultless.”

She smiles and it makes _ him _ smile so wide his cheeks hurt. He shuts his laptop and her eyes shine expectantly. “If I wrote my number on a napkin for you, would you call?”

Her teeth trap her bottom lip and Jughead wonders, as she blinks and then looks at him from under her lashes, whether it’s deliberate. “How about we skip that part?”

  
  


-

  
  


She has to catch the subway home, she tells him, and gets up from the booth with what he thinks might be reluctance. He offers to walk her but she insists she’ll be fine - it’s a journey she makes every day.

(He thinks about the type of people who ride the subway at the kind of time she finishes her shift and decides he likes this even less than when the redhead had given her his number in front of him)

“To the door then,” Jughead says like some kind of white knight, and Betty laughs. 

He’ll take it.

The bell chimes as they step outside and they find it’s raining. He watches as she looks up at the sky, droplets of water catching in her eyelashes.

And then he kisses her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait on this one. It's only short, but I felt it needed a little something to round this ficlet off. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has commented, messaged and left kudos. I really appreciate them all and I'm working through my replies. You guys are awesome x

Pop Tate knows love when he sees it. It’s not those big romantic gestures you see in movies: a room filled with roses; dinner at a fancy restaurant; a young man running into the road before a cab pulls away in the driving rain.

No.

It’s in the tiny little details that are almost so small they go unnoticed, and yet, somehow, they’re so obvious sometimes that they might as well be written in capital letters.

He sees it now - _love_ that is - in the eyes of the pretty waitress who makes him a turkey sandwich like the kind his wife always made before she passed.

Pop Tate knows love, and he misses it terribly.

  


-

  


He’s watched his own romance movie played out in the tiny little diner after midnight - all fleeting glances and blushing cheeks; awkward flirting and snatched moments of bravery. And now it’s the sequel: the happy ever after with supporting performances from pie and coffee and a laptop he figures must house an awful lot more writing than he ever did as a kid.

(Of course, there were no computers then)

The door opens a little before midnight as it always does, and the boy Betty calls _Jug_ ducks his head despite the fact that he’s nowhere near tall enough to bang his crown on the frame.

“Hi,” she smiles over the counter, and he tips her chin with his forefinger to kiss her in response.

Pop doesn’t have to watch to know that he’ll sit in the same booth he always does, or to know that Betty will take him coffee and a large slice of pie from the one that’s left under the plastic dome.

He always gets a piece too - _“Might as well eat it,”_ she always says - and he’ll nod a grateful thanks at her. He pays for his pie via Betty’s tip.

Maybe, he thinks, she can save for something good.

  


-

  


Betty never fails to show up for a shift. Even on the days where she’s visibly unwell, when she’s pressing a palm to her forehead now and then to rub at the throbbing headache, she stands behind the counter with a smile, ready to pour coffee and make a turkey sandwich.

Tonight is one of those shifts: Pop knows the blonde waitress should either be resting in bed or on the couch, and yet she’s placing his sandwich in front of him on the counter.

“Enjoy,” she says.

He smiles and dips his head. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Betty only shrugs. “Who’d make your sandwich if I wasn’t?”

Later, after an hour or so, Jughead arrives like usual - maybe slightly earlier, if anything - and takes just one look at his girlfriend before his eyes soften and his lips part.

“Baby,” he says, “You’re sick.”

“I told her she shouldn’t be here,” Pop says, and the young man nods. They talk sometimes - a few words here and there - usually about the girl who gives them both free pie.

He doesn’t watch as Jughead strokes his fingertips down her arm, taking the towel from her grasp; nor when he pulls her gently to him to kiss the top of her head. He tries not to listen to the whispered, _“Let me - I can pour coffee Betts.”_ Bids an early goodnight when the couple sews their fingers together; her head on his shoulder, eyes closed when he presses a soft kiss to her forehead in the comfort of Jughead’s preferred booth.

  


-

  


There’s a ring on Betty’s left hand when she sets a clean coffee cup in front of him one freezing winter’s night. It glints under the halogen bulb and Pop feels a smile creep along his lips.

“He finally asked you then?”

She blushes but grins wide. “We were in Vermont -”

He stops her with the slow raise of his hand: he doesn’t need to know. “That’s for you honey,” he says. “You and your Jughead. Not for some old codger that sits at a counter all night.”

She places her hand on his and her gentle touch reminds him of the way his wife would sit at the tiny kitchen table they were given from an aunt of hers on their wedding day.

“You’re not an old codger, Pop,” she says fondly, and gives his hand a squeeze.

He thinks about that tiny table with its chipped edges; remembers the cornbread Edna Mae had made for him the first day of their marriage; the pat of her palm over his when he’d told her it smelled wonderful.

A few hours later, when Jughead stops by, Pop shakes his hand and says, glancing in Betty’s direction, “You look after her.”

He thinks he might detect a thickening in the young man’s throat when he nods. “Of course. Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are HUGELY appreciated.
> 
> Follow me on Tumblr at @itsindiansummer13


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